“It would be hard to exaggerate Ernest Hemingway’s influence over American literature, but his influence on our lives is probably larger still. Here he is in a letter to his mother, July 1924, describing the San Fermín bullfighting festival in Pamplona, Spain: “It is a purely Spanish festa … and there are practically no foreigners.” Two years later he published a novel set in Pamplona, and from that moment on his letter’s description of a sleepy town would never hold true again. The 2012 college grad who will be gored running with the bulls in Pamplona next July, and the thousands of others safely drinking too much behind the barriers, are all living out the fantasies of one man.”
